Japan Trip 2013 Tokyo animate Otome road at Ikebukuro 885
Animate
Animate Ltd. (株式会社アニメイト Kabushiki gaisha Animeito?) is the retailing arm of MOVIC and is the largest retailer of anime, games, and manga in Japan. The first and headquarters store of Animate opened in 1983 and is located in Ikebukuro, a district in Tokyo, Japan.
Otome Road
Otome Road (乙女ロード Otome Rōdo?, lit. Maiden Road) is a nickname for a street in Ikebukuro - a district of Tokyo - which is located to the west of the Sunshine 60 building near Ikebukuro Station. The name originated in the May 2004 issue of Puff magazine. The name is derived from a dense grouping of shops that specialize in Otome-kei (anime and dōjinshi aimed at women) merchandise, all on one side of a roughly 200 meter corridor. Frequenters have more bluntly called the area Fujoshi Street.
The area's media visibility increased though the 2005 film Densha Otoko, which presented Ikebukuro, represented by Otome Road, as the female otaku's town corresponding to Akihabara, the male otaku's town.
As it is only a small area of a larger commercial district it does not have frequenters who walk around in cosplay, and it is difficult to distinguish from other streets.
Ikebukuro
Ikebukuro (池袋) is a commercial and entertainment district in Toshima, Tokyo, Japan. Toshima ward offices, Ikebukuro station, and several shops, restaurants, and enormous department stores are located within city limits.
At the center of Ikebukuro is the train and subway station, a huge urban gathering shared by the JR East lines, the Seibu Ikebukuro Line and the Tōbu Tōjō Line. It is one of the main commuter hubs in the western Yamanote area of Tokyo. Ikebukuro Station is the second busiest station in Japan, second only to Shinjuku Station.
Around the station are the Seibu and Tōbu department stores. Seibu, written with the characters for West and Musashi (province) 西武, is on the east end of the station and Tōbu, written with the characters for East and Musashi 東武, is on the west end. East of the station, on the site of Sugamo Prison, stands Sunshine 60, which was Tokyo's tallest building at the time of its construction. Adjacent to Sunshine City, on Meiji-Dori is the Toyota Amlux Building which houses the Toyota showroom. Otome Road, a leading shopping area for otaku products aimed at women, is located nearby. Marui and Don Quijote also have department stores in the area. The principal electronics retailer in Ikebukuro is Bic Camera. There is a small pleasure district located in Nishi-Ikebukuro, similar to Shinjuku's Kabukichō.
The old village of Ikebukuro stood to the northwest of the station. Most of the area on which modern Ikebukuro is built was historically known as Sugamo. In the Taishō and Shōwa periods, the relatively low land prices attracted artists and foreign workers, who lent a somewhat cosmopolitan atmosphere to Ikebukuro. Until October 1, 1932 when Toshima ward was established, the area was an independent municipality of Ikebukuro-mura (池袋村).
The kanji for Ikebukuro literally means pond bag. Outside the west exit of Ikebukuro station near an entrance to the Fukutoshin Line is a small plaque explaining three origins of the name Ikebukuro. The first is that in the northeastern part of the village there was a lake shaped like someone holding a bag. The second is that there was once a large number of lakes in the area of various sizes (thus implying a bag full of lakes). The third is that long ago a turtle came out of the lake carrying a bag on its back.
There is a small statue of an owl located near the center of the city called Ikefukurō-zō (いけふくろう像), meaning lake owl statue. It is a play on words from the alternative meaning of fukuro as owl (although owl is pronounced with a long final oh, rather than a short o in the word fukuro for bag). The owl statue has become a famous meeting place along the lines of the statue of Hachikō located outside of Shibuya Station.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia